Resident Evil 2 director Hideki Kamiya has explained why the game introduced an entirely new cast, as opposed to bringing back the original STARS members. He says that being grilled about it resulted in the creation of Claire Redfield.
Kamiya is a legendary figure in the games industry thanks to his own creations like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Okami, and the woefully underrated The Wonderful 101, but it's easy to forget that he also started his immaculate directing career with the sequel to Resident Evil. And even though he'd only worked on two games prior, his directorial debut turned out to be what many consider to be the best game in the series (and eventually got remade as another one of the best games in the series).
On Twitter (spotted by Nintendo Life), Kamiya was asked if Rebecca Chambers was originally meant to appear in Resident Evil 2. Kamiya (via machine translation) responded that looking back at the development of the game, he described himself as selfish and didn't take the players' feelings into account when developing the game, with a policy of starting fresh without attachment to the previous game.
However, that philosophy got buried as part of Biohazard 1.5 – the original version of Resident Evil 2, which has since been leaked online over the years. Kamiya recalls Noboru Sugimura joining the team and asking why he wasn't using any of the characters from the first game, which resulted in the creation of Claire Redfield as the sister of Chris.
In Resident Evil 1.5, Elza Walker was the original protagonist alongside Leon Kennedy, a motorcyclist college student who ends up at Raccoon Police Department. She never made her debut in the series, but Claire did get her outfit as a bonus in the remade 2019 version. However, this original incarnation did include Leon, who has since become the most beloved character in the series, so Kamiya's vision wasn't entirely wrong.
Ironically, Kamiya would also end up taking the series in a radically different direction when he was placed in the director's chair for Resident Evil 4. It featured a protagonist named Tony with superhuman abilities in a fast-paced, stylish action game. Eventually it was deemed too different and spun off into its own thing, resulting in the creation of Devil May Cry.
